The Palmer United Party is finalising details of its emissions trading scheme and expects to bring an extraordinary 300-page amendment to the Senate next week.

The amendments will halt the abolition of the Climate Change Authority (CCA), allocate new money to the agency and put it in charge of monitoring climate action by Australia's five major trading partners.

And as key details of the scheme emerge, Palmer United leader Clive Palmer has warned the government not to try to pull the wool over the eyes of his inexperienced senators.

Advertisement

The warning comes after the government attempted to bring the eight carbon tax repeal bills out of committee for debate, but left out the CCA bill the Palmer party plans to amend to introduce its ETS architecture.

Under the Palmer plan, the ETS will lie dormant with a starting price of zero dollars.

It would become active when the United States, Japan, South Korea, the EU and China are judged to have taken major action to reduce emissions on a nationwide basis.

The authority would be responsible for advising the government when that has occurred.

Fairfax Media has been told by sources in the Palmer camp that the draft amendment would not require those five to have emissions trading schemes of their own.

However, this detail of the amendments has not been finalised and it is understood at least one key member of the Palmer team is pushing for an ETS to be a requirement.

Mr Palmer said on Tuesday the scheme would borrow heavily from the existing emissions trading scheme, established under the former Labor government.

“It takes in the original ETS and puts a provision that it doesn't apply until such time that our major trading partners take action," he said.

“It sets up the CCA as the monitoring authority to advise when that happens and would set aside some additional money for them to do that.

“The idea is they [the government] will bring the bill on next week and we will move an amendment.”

In the absence of an ETS, the authority would examine whether the US, Japan, South Korea, the EU and China have taken other sufficient action to reduce their emissions and trigger a move to an ETS in Australia.

This action could take the form of other measures that are effectively a carbon price, such as a direct tax on carbon, stricter standards for power stations and even Direct Action style measures, as planned by the Abbott government.

The ETS is likely to fail in the House of Representatives even if it passes the Senate.

But Mr Palmer said on Monday that support for direct action from the PUP was contingent on government support for his ETS, potentially setting up a standoff.

Debate on the carbon tax repeal resumed on Tuesday afternoon and the tax is expected to be repealed this week.

That move stoked fears in the Palmer United Party that the government would let the CCA bill languish - thus avoiding the debate on the ETS - and prompted the PUP to initially vote with Labor and the Greens to stop debate commencing.

Late on Monday the government returned with all nine bills, including the CCA, and secured support from PUP senators for the repeal debate to begin.

“What they had agreed was that they would bring all the bills out of committee – that would have been the nine. Then they just brought eight; we wanted the nine brought out," Mr Palmer said.

“Our whip [Senator Dio Wang] took the appropriate action and said he wanted the nine [out of committee].

“They would have thought our guys weren't experienced and didn't know what they were doing, but they did.”

Government sources, however, denied there had been any skulduggery and said the CCA bill had been delayed at the request of PUP.

They pointed to the "first day of school" confusion and inexperience on the party of the new senators, insisted Senate leader Eric Abetz had been acting in “complete good faith” and that the confusion over the bill had been resolved.

Climate Institute chief executive John Connor said the government was in for a ‘‘rude shock’’ if it thought it could simply abolish the carbon tax and walk away from pricing carbon.

‘‘I believe that Clive Palmer is serious about wanting this dormant ETS,’’ he said.

The PUP’s move would ensure Australia took heed of international climate change mitigation action and would look at other emissions reduction measures.

‘‘The key thing out of this is that we now have two years of experience of this working,'' Mr Connor said. ''The empty scare campaign of 2011 and 2012 has come up against the evidence that these laws have worked and they haven’t had the economic impact the government claimed.’’

8 Jul
The Abbott government's plan to bring on a vote to scrap the carbon tax was delayed on Monday after a day of chaos in the Senate that saw Palmer United Party senators side with the Opposition and Greens to block its first attempt.

8 Jul
Tony Abbott’s plan to axe the carbon price this week has come in for some withering criticism from his own side of politics, with a former head of the UK’s Conservative Party declaring it to be an “appalling” move that “recklessly” endangers the future.